Over the past several years the explosion in Stock/Shelf Keeping Units (SKUs) has added considerable costs to beverage distributors supply chains. This explosion has created increase operational costs relating to efficiencies around storing and picking product in warehouses. The SKU explosion is especially affects those roles and processes requiring continuous physical work methods i.e. warehouse picking & load building.
For decades direct store delivery (DSD) distribution consisted of handling a few produced products for distribution. In past years when a few additional brands and package innovations were introduced to a distributors supply chain the additional SKU's were usually managed well within the warehouse.
In the last decade, market demands forced an unprecedented expansion of more product categories and packages driving SKU complexity within the warehouse, constraining the traditional supply chain processes and storage systems. The ability to handle the number of increasing SKUs in a warehouse has become a challenge within itself.
One particular challenge within a distributor's warehouse is the ability to store & pick beer kegs effectively in efficiently. Currently beer distributors place barrel kegs on a static storage racks/shelf to be stored and picked at a later time. The unique characteristics of a half kegs with a weigh of approximately 165 lbs. and a width of 16″ and a height of 24″ make the handling of kegs particularly challenging. Warehouse pickers can only safely “pick” this heavy SKU's from approximately 1.6-4.5 feet off the ground without the use of additional equipment. Any higher pick location would prove to be unsafe from an ergonomic perspective. Given this physical constraint the number of dedicated pick locations needed for the growing number of SKU's requires a distributor to utilize a large amount of square footage to accommodate the needed pick locations thus driving additional operational costs.
Therefore, a need exists for an effective and efficient means to store and pick heavy kegs, barrels, drums, Co2 containers etc. without the use of additional equipment such as a fork-lift truck and in a safe ergonomic manner.